 The Return to Caring Skills: Gender, Class, and Occupational Wages in the USBruce Pietrykowski Feminist Economics, 2017, vol. 23, issue 4, 32-61 Abstract: Feminist economics has contributed to the understanding of the economic importance of care work. Most studies find a wage penalty associated with caring occupations. This study extends the feminist research on care work beyond caring occupations by identifying specific caring skills and activities derived from the 2014 O*NET job-evaluation data. Four caring skills – (1) Assisting and Caring for Others, (2) Establishing and Maintaining Interpersonal Relationships, (3) Service Orientation, and (4) Social Perceptiveness – were used in ordinary least-squares and quantile wage regressions for 623 occupations in the United States. Findings indicate that the return to caring and assisting skills results in a wage penalty for low-wage workers but a wage premium for workers in high-wage and male occupations. By identifying the impact of gender and class on the economic return to particular caring skills, the study broadens the understanding of care work, especially in relation to US wage inequality. Date: 2017 Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:femeco:v:23:y:2017:i:4:p:32-61 Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from DOI: 10.1080/13545701.2016.1257142 Access Statistics for this article Feminist Economics is currently edited by Diana Strassmann More articles in Feminist Economics from Taylor & Francis Journals |
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